The truth is that the age restriction is completely arbitrary, tied only to our puritanical comfort levels. And listen, I get it; I think it’s fair to say that most people are uncomfortable with the idea of a 14-year-old having sex. But here’s the thing—access to Plan B isn’t about keeping a 14-year-old from having sex—by the time she gets to the pharmacy, that ship has sailed—it’s about keeping a 14-year-old who has already had sex from getting pregnant. And despite what urban legend (or past embarrassing FDA memos) may tell you, making emergency contraception more available is not more likely to make young teens have sex—it will just make them less likely to end up pregnant.

Amazing the GOP congress has time to pass Abortion restrictions, chase scandals and vote to repeal ObamaCare time and time again, and yet have no time to help improve the economy. Someone really should create an add about that for the 2014 election, just so the voters know where the GOP priorities really lie.

However, a CBS/NYTimes poll
distinguished between tracking phone records of ordinary Americans
and those suspected of terrorist activity. In contrast to Pew,
CBS/NYtimes found 58 percent disapprove of “federal government
agencies collecting phone records of ordinary Americans” but 75
percent approve of tracking “phone records of Americans that the
government suspects of terrorist activity.” Americans continue to
reveal their preference for targeted surveillance when 73 percent
told a Rasmussen poll
that the “government should be required to show a judge the reason
for needing to monitor calls of any specific Americans” and 64
percent said “it is better to collect phone records only of people
suspected of having terrorist connections.”

Now doesn't this fit like a glove with what I've been saying about commercial data collection and then some!

Maybe people will really start paying attention to the fact that commercial data collection is a much worse problem than people want to admit:

Aside from the ubiquitous and deeply intrusive nature of it, it's a ready made source to be tapped by the government should they actually want it. Going back to Bachmann's startlingly intelligent questioning on the other Swampland blog, which includes questions about "databases tracking average Americans", I will point out that commercial data collectors already have that data!

"Orszag said that it was difficult to get the public sector productivity data after that point, as the Bureau of Labor Statistics stopped collecting the numbers as a part of their cost-cutting initiative. He cited an observation made by the McKinsey Global Institute, suggesting that the public sector continued to fall behind the private sector after 1995.

According to Orszag, “Some of this increasing gap has to do with advances in management techniques in the private sector. Some, undoubtedly, has to do with the challenges the federal government has in attracting and hiring top talent.” He said that “The average time it takes to hire a new federal employee is 140 days – and by that time, many of the best candidates, understandably, have gone elsewhere. But I believe that the biggest driver of this productivity divide is the information technology gap.”

What? The one with his handout makes a fool of himself with his own link. What does he think of a government that could hire the best and the brightest at competitive wages quickly? My bad, he trashes the very government that his ideology creates.

Spin spin spin. What you don't realize is that the latter is insanely difficult to perform without the former. Taking a full set of phone records and then mining the data for the individuals you suspect is thousands of times easier than asking for just the subset belonging to your suspect in the first place - in the first case, Verizon et all don't have to perform any special functions to get you the data because all the user-specific logic is performed by the government (and as someone in the IT industry, I can tell you that this is a huge deal). Add in that there's significant response times and how much network information you'll discover through the data you end up pulling, you end up with a much better solution when you blanket pull.

@outsider2011@MementoMori The government outsourced my job, the government caused the housing bubble, the government printing cash corrupts all, Medicare denies you services, government spying on millions, I want bigger government!

I agree. The youngest parents ever were 7 and 8 years old. No, seriously.

And study after study after study after study demonstrates that whether you teach contraception or not or provide contraception or not, it does not affect how much sex teens have nor how early they begin having sex. The only thing it changes is what ratio of that is safe sex - and subsequent rates of STI transmission and pregnancies.

@MementoMori@ahandout@forgottenlord Actually, recent polls, e.g. Rasmussen, show that among the three groups Democrat, Republican, and Independent, the views on government surveillance by group that are most different between the times Bush was in office vs now is clearly the Democrats. It, other words, Democrats are the group whose opinion is most based upon which Party is in power when poll occurred, contrary to your implication.

"The account, listed under the name Tamerlan Tsarnaev and identified as active since August 2012, includes two videos under the sub-category “terrorists.” It also includes seven videos filed under “Islam,” five under “favorite videos,” and three under “Timur Mucuraev,” a popular Chechen singer," says the Washington Post.

"Another video under the “Islam” heading shows young men carrying assault rifles through a forest as a narrator intones, “They demonize as terrorists anyone who supports Islam."

False. Some company determined that it was cheaper to have your job performed outside of the country. That was a corporation who made that decision. At least, I don't recall the government ever legislating that a company had to outsource.

"the government caused the housing bubble"

False: while Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac did not stop the housing bubble, they were not the people who generated hundreds of billions of dollars of BBB rated bonds that were then packaged up into devices so complex that the ratings agencies couldn't recognize that's all they were and marked them 80% AAA rating which was then bought by all sorts of investment institutions none the wiser of the fact that they were holding onto garbage (and in many cases....the very same institutions that had done the bundling up in the first place). There was nothing that fueled the housing bubble as much as the CDO

"the government printing cash corrupts all"

Maybe, but that's beside the point here. Plus, there's nothing quite as hilarious as the government printing money, lending it out at near zero interest and then corporations turning around and lending it back to the government for considerably more.

"Medicare denies you services"

And private health insurance denies you coverage and private health care is the biggest cause of personal bankruptcies in the US. Medicare ain't perfect, but it's better than just about every other system in the US Health world which is why it is by far the most popular government program

"government spying on millions"

Again, beside the point and no matter how much you think the government is spying on you, they have *nothing* on corporations.

The type of statement you quoted pushes the envelope of what is acceptable behavior. A 14 year old that is having sex doesn't have any boundaries. Either her parent(s) are absent or they don't care. That is the root of the problem. You don't throw up your hands and say, "well they're gonna have sex eventually, or they already have, so we might as well go along, and here use my bed and I'll supply the condoms, the day after pill, just in case, and the romantic lighting. Wouldn't want to be a prude about it.

That's the same thinking that adults use who throw parties for under age kids and supply the alcohol. There're gonna drink anyway, so I might as well have them safe at home; here's a keg junior.